In the 5th edition of the HEART Conference, we emphasize the importance of the young generation’s initiative in creating a brighter path in healthcare.
We are the Millennials who are on call to change the world for the better. We’re passionate and purpose driven. We value collaboration over competition.
We’ve taken our education into our own hands, and we want to inspire others to do the same. This is the reason behind our relentless effort to create a community where people work together, innovate and evolve.
We want to be the director of our own film, not just an actor in someone else’s. Thus, we invite you to join us in our journey and help us create an unforgettable movie!
Speakers
NICOLAE IORDACHE IORDACHE
Managing Director of Iordacheiordache T&D
First human, then doctor
Nicolae Iordache Iordache is a consultant, trainer, speaker and author with 20 years of professional activity in the NGO sector, medical and pharmaceutical business. Graduated MD, he holds an MBA joint degree from Case Western University, Cleveland, Ohio and CEU School of Business, Budapest. In 2013, in an attempt to fill the business education gap of medical doctors, Nicolae Iordache Iordache published his first book on branding doctors and medical services, titled “Cine ești tu, doctore?” (Who are you, doc?). Dr. Iordache has established, and is Managing Director of Iordacheiordache T&D, a company specializing in human performance and productivity, with the aim to support highly motivated sales executives to lead effective sales teams, especially in fields related to health care. He will provide us with the chance of learning all the steps required to be taken in order to reach the highest peak in a medical career, from observing your attitude towards yourself and the ones around and the work that you perform to knowing how to promote yourself as a doctor and how to deal with the management and business part of medicine in an effective way.
GERNOT GRÖMER, PhD, MSc
Founder and Administrative Director of the Austrian Space Forum
The medical challenges of an expedition to Mars
Gernot Grömer is the Administrative Director of the Austrian Space Forum and lecturer in Astrobiology at the University of Innsbruck. He leads the Austrian Space Forum’s Spacesuit Laboratory, currently developing the Aouda.X spacesuit. The suit is designed to withstand conditions similar to those of Mars while being able to support basic human needs.
This February, Mr. Grömer and his team tested it in the deserts of Oman and will be able to tell us how the spacesuit fared in the area where the soil most closely resembles that on Mars, as well as about the physical and behavioural changes the crew faced in this mission..
With a wide smile and the belief that the first human to walk on Mars might already have been born, Dr. Grömer is the researcher and explorer who will share stories about smart solutions to the daily medical and technical challenges that outer space poses, about teamwork and small, but steady steps towards discovering the unknown.
GERNOT GRÖMER, PhD, MSc
Founder and Administrative Director of the Austrian Space Forum
FABIEN WAGNER
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne, Switzerland
Reversing paralysis – on your feet again
Fabien Wagner is a neuroscientist and Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Neuroprosthetic and the Brain Mind Institute of the Life Science School at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, working under the guidance of Prof. Grégoire Courtine.
The team he is part of conceive and deploy innovative interventions to restore motor function after central nervous system disorders and trauma and translate their findings into clinical applications capable of improving the quality of life for people with motor impairment.
His scientific activity is especially built on principles of Electrophysiology and Robotics and it focuses on the closed-loop neuromodulation of spinal circuits underlying locomotion in non-human primates and patients with spinal cord injury.
Overall, we will understand the way an electronic interface between brain modulation and electrical spinal cord stimulation has the potential to bypass the injury, and thus to restore brain control over leg movements, so that the quality of patients’ lives will be highly increased.
Prof. MARJOLEIN VAN EGMOND, PhD
Vrije Universiteit Medical Center, Amsterdam
Immunoglobulin A: Trojan horse or magic bullet?
Marjolein van Egmond, Professor in Oncology and Inflammation, is principal investigator at the Department of Molecular Cell Biology & Immunology at Vrije Universiteit Medical Center and staff member at the Department of Surgery.
She focuses her research on immunotherapy of colorectal cancer and chronic bowel inflammations looking for translation of experimental findings into clinical applications.
Throughout her career she has been fascinated by the role of antibodies in immunity and the activation of immune cells via antibody receptors (Fc receptors). Initially her research focused on the role of the Fc receptor for IgA (Fc RI) in protective mucosal immunity.
She will tell us about how IgA can be the trigger as well as the solution for various diseases, such as cancer. She will also be teaching young aspiring researchers how much patience is needed for successful research and relating that to the moment she decided to stay in research.
Prof. MARJOLEIN VAN EGMOND, PhD
Vrije Universiteit Medical Center, Amsterdam
Prof. IHSAN SOLAROGLU, MD PhD
Koç University, Department of Neurosurgery
Fluorescence-guided Tumor Resection
Ihsan Solaroglu is Associate Dean for Research at the School of Medicine and Director of Graduate School of Health Sciences at Koç University. His secondary appointment is Adjunct Professor of Basic Science Research at Loma Linda University School of Medicine, California, US.
His clinical interest and expertise focuses on neurovascular surgery and neuro-oncology, having performed performed more than three thousand neurosurgical operations in the past twelve years. He and his team are highly qualified in treating cerebral aneurysms, brain tumors, CNS trauma, and complex spine disorders in a state-of-the-art environment with low mortality and morbidity rates.
We are proud to say that Prof. Solaroglu is one of the speakers who were with us for the very first edition of HEART in 2014, when speaking on the topic of translational medicine, he shared his experience on how clinical expertise feeds forward into new research hypotheses.
Prof. Nigel Davies, PhD
St Thomas's Hospital, London
If you go to Mars, what might happen to your eyes?
Dr. Nigel Davies is a Consultant Ophthalmologist at St Thomas’s Hospital in London. He originally studied physics and is now a retinal specialist. He always maintained an interest in physics, particularly in astronomy and cosmology. In this presentation we will examine the possible changes that occur in the human visual system during long term space travel, including the problems that are already known gained from experience of astronauts on the International Space Station. We will spend a bit of time thinking about potential vision issues in space and how these might be addressed
Prof. Nigel Davies, PhD
St. Thomas's Hospital, London
MARTIN INDERBITZIN, PhD
Neuroscientist, Filmmaker, Public Speaker. Initiator of “My Survival Story”
Life is a story. What is yours?
Martin Inderbitzin studied neurobiology at the ETH Zurich and did his PhD in Neuroscience at University of Pompeu, Barcelona with a focus on emotions and stress. Following his passion, he then started working as an editor and producer for a few years in Zurich.
In 2012, when diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, he decided to sign up for a triathlon despite never have practiced this sport before. Influenced by this personal experience, he founded MySurvivalStory.org, an initiative with the goal to document inspiring cancer survival stories around the globe and make them visible to other patients and their families. Martin moves people with his personal story and uplifting attitude. Combining a neuroscientific view with his personal experience gives him a unique opportunity to talk about patient-centered care.
BODGAN FLOREA, MD, MSc
Senior Neurologist, Epilepsy and EEG monitoring Center Cluj-Napoca
Connected care - Telemedicine in Epilepsy
Bogdan Florea is Senior Neurologist at the Epilepsy and EEG monitoring Center in Cluj-Napoca, Romania, as well as a founding member of the TeleMedicine in Epilepsy Network in Romania, a Lions Club project that seeks to provide the approximately 400.000 patients suffering from epilepsy with the opportunity to benefit from an accurate diagnosis and modern treatment.
He is also one of the three researchers that discovered the “NIU-COMPLEX” on the electroencephalogram (EEG) in deep comatose patients, which is an indicative of unexpected cerebral activity in flatlined patients. While the EEG flatline is associated with absent cerebral activity, the study’s findings challenge common wisdom, suggesting it may only indicate silence among the cortical neurons, whilst subcortical structures may remain active.
Based on the project that he implemented and further developed, “Telemedicine in Epilepsy”(which received the TEDxCluj Award in 2017), he will enlighten us on the tremendous impact that such a national network has on the medical act, enabling for better access to both diagnosis and personalized treatment of patients suffering from epilepsy. One of the main goals would be to erase the limitations usually encountered when patients live in remote areas, by stacking medical files on a central server, accessible to neurologists regardless of their location.
BODGAN FLOREA, MD, MSc
Senior Neurologist, Epilepsy and EEG monitoring Center Cluj-Napoca
PHILIP CHOBAN
Managing Director of Telios Care
Patient Centered Care - The future is now
Philip Choban is the CEO of TeleMedEuropa and the Managing Director of Telios Care. Philip and his team bring over 50 years combined of experience in the Tele-Health field as well as an insurmountable passion for change. Caring for others is the main driving force behind this company, besides constant search for healthcare and dementia-related knowledge. Philip, together with his partner, Corina Danciu, are also the only Alzheimer’s Care specialists outside of North America to be certified by the Health Care Interactive and the American Alzheimer’s Association.
Patient-centered care is a growing movement that replaces our current physician centered system with one that revolves around the patient. Based on this principle and through an actual demonstration of a medical triage software, Philip Choban will shed light on the numerous advantages that come from integrating telemedicine into a nevertheless humanistic approach, which can be done by means that require us to acknowledge that we have the ability to convert the future into the “now”.
DANA BARTOȘ
"Dr. O. Fodor" Regional Institute of Gastroenterology and Hepatology Iuliu Haţieganu University of Medicine and Pharmacy Cluj-Napoca
Progress as team work, hard work, open mind and sacrifice
Dana Bartoș, MD PhD, is general surgeon at the Regional Institute of Gastroenterology and Hepatology, Cluj-Napoca. She specializes in laparoscopic surgery and interventional endoscopy, besides teaching Anatomy and Embryology. She manages to find balance between improving the patient care system, personal development, teaching methods and family life, constantly guided by the belief that “the most important thing in life is to be faithful and trustworthy”. As Assistant Professor, she brought fresh innovation to the department of Anatomy and Embryology, such as using interactive dissection tables, rather than studying in the traditional way. Her main purpose is to improve the quality of medical education by improving the means of studying as well as student-teacher relationship.
At HEART 2018, she will also be sharing her insight on our generation, the Millennials she dearly teaches and relates to and on how we build our future brick by brick, each of us adding something unique and remarkable. As we shape our future together, one should always keep in mind that it takes a team to build a dream.